Windows 10 Release Date, Free Upgrade News: New Features Revealed By Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. has announced that Windows 10 will be available for free to certain Windows users as it released more information on its latest operating system.

Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's operating systems group, said Windows 10 would be free for those who currently use Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

After the new operating system is released, those who want to upgrade free of cost will have one year to take advantage of the offer. However, some editions will be excluded, Belfiore said during a demo of the operating system on Wednesday.

The demo was attended by a select audience and members of the Insiders testing program, who will be the first to get Windows 10 in the coming week. At the demo, the consumer portion of the operation system was previewed.

Meanwhile, the much anticipated preview of Windows 10 for mobile devices, earlier scheduled to take place on Wednesday, was pushed to February.

It was also announced that a number of features previewed during Wednesday's demo will not make it to a build that will be released soon. Instead, the new features will be incorporated into the build gradually over four to five months.

Among the new features pointed out by Belfiore was Cortana, the digital assistant which is already available on Windows phones and will now come to the desktop version of the software. Cortana will be featured adjacent to the start button on the desktop's taskbar and can be given commands via text or voice input. The assistant can answer basic questions about the weather, search the web for specific answers, and find files on the local machine, OneDrive account and even on a business network, all based on natural language questions.

Cortana also works along with the new web browser codenamed Spartan which will allow users to highlight and note details on a web page and then share the full page including comments with other users. Spartan will also feature a reading mode, which will remove all ads from a webpage and only leave the text.

In addition to the new features of Windows 10, Microsoft also unveiled the Windows HoloLens headset, Windows Holographic for 3D imaging in the operating system and the HoloStudio application which can be used to create holograms.

While an exact date for Windows 10's release has not yet been confirmed, many reports are touting that the new OS will be available from October 22, 2015.